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Belltown and the Recession

My father worked in a union shop for over 40 years. He had a defined benefit retirement program administrated by Bankers Life and Casualty out of Chicago. He retired early in 1981 because my mother was very ill. Bankers Life paid out a bonus because of their admirable ability to make a profit the honorable way. He will be 91 next year and his defined benefit program has provided him with a very comfortable living.

Insurance was also provided to him because of the union negotiations. It saved my mother’s life twice but she eventually succumbed to the cancer which she had fought for 40 years.

I retired under the PERS 2 retirement program a couple of years ago. We were offered an opportunity to convert to PERS 3 which included a nice lump sum plus one half the defined benefit programs and a 401K option. We could choose the “risk” investment but could not change it later on. Only new employees chose to take the PERS 3 option because it was not a good financial plan for those with over five years of service. I am living comfortably with my defined benefits but have to buy my health insurance.

Our union did not do much for us because of the “no-strike” section of the laws of Washington. Each year our experienced employees have retired and new ones are hired off the street. No longer are there qualifications for employment except in a very few areas.

When employees are laid off at the Washington State Department of Transportation it is always the newest hires. Those engineers who were so expensively recruited are now gone. Those employees who are left were those hired in the 70s and 80s. They have learned to work the system and are rather hesitant to try anything new. So we hear the dreaded statement, “We have always done it that way”.

When anyone talks about balancing the State or municipal budgets by streamlining the operation or laying off employees they are really not understanding what the story is. First, the newest hires will be layed off first leaving the current operations the same as they always were so there will be no change in operations; Second, most of State and municipal employees own their own home, pay state and local taxes, and Federal Income Taxes. These are people who provide the money spent in stores. State and municipal employees are one of the great ways to channel taxpayer money to everybody including the smallest shop or business.

Municipal and State employees should have job security, above-market benefits (Wal-Mart’s benefits?) and step increases in pay so their spendable income can provide safety-net programs and there are no low-income parents so they can send their children to college.
Step increases in pay are an incentive to advance, get more training, or a college degree so one’s job can be performed at a higher level. I don’t want to live in Kalama where there are no services and one has to drive 20 miles for a loaf of bread. How close is the nearest COSTCO?

If you could lay off 100 managers in Olympia it would save about $10 million dollars per year. Who is first on the list?
Dust Bowl is a coast-to-coast wasteland of foreclosed office spaces where desk chairs and knots of dead phones lie abandoned in a fluorescent half-light. The desperation, fear and anger that the American worker and unemployed are feeling right now is not being addressed with any concern.

Via: Las Vegas Sun:
It sounds like a George Lopez joke.
“Times are so bad that I saw an Anglo day laborer standing outside Home Depot the other day.”
Except it’s true!
In the latest sign of the Las Vegas Valley’s economic free fall, U.S. citizens are starting to show up in the early mornings outside home improvement stores and plant nurseries across the Las Vegas Valley, jostling with illegal immigrants for a shot at a few hours of work.
Experts say the slow-starting but seemingly inexorable trend is occurring nationwide.
“It’s the equivalent of selling apples in the Great Depression,” said Harley Shaiken, chairman of the Center for Latin American studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..